26-Aug-2012

Emulator for Classic Mac OS environment.

SheepShaver is an Open Source PowerPC Mac OS run-time environment. That is, it enables you to run PowerPC Classic Mac OS software on your computer, even if you are using a different operating system. However, you still need a copy of Mac OS and a PowerMac ROM image to use this program. SheepShaver is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

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SheepShaver is an Open Source PowerPC Mac OS run-time environment. That is, it enables you to run PowerPC Classic Mac OS software on your computer, even if you are using a different operating system. However, you still need a copy of Mac OS and a PowerMac ROM image to use this program. SheepShaver is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

If you are using a PowerPC-based system, applications will run at native speeds (i.e., without any emulation involved). On other systems, SheepShaver provides the first PowerPC G4 emulator, though without MMU, to enable the execution of Mac OS Classic. Performance with the current CPU emulator using basic just-in-time (JIT) translation techniques is roughly 1/8-th of native speeds.

The following platforms are currently supported: Linux (i386, ppc, x86_64), MacOS X (i386, ppc), Darwin, NetBSD 2.0, FreeBSD 5.3 and Windows for x86. Please note that I am pretty careless of the Windows version since I am not a Windows developer. You are heartily invited to join the effort!

Version 2.4:

Support for disk images in sparsebundle format.

Cursor grabbing toggle (Ctrl-F5).

Pressing Ctrl-F5 will make the emulator grab the mouse cursor and keep it inside its window. Especially useful for some games. Again pressing Ctrl-F5 will release the cursor.

Window-Fullscreen toggle (Ctrl-Return).

Pressing Ctrl-Return will toggle between window mode and full-screen mode.

Known issues:

On all hosts: When you switch from window to full-screen mode using Ctrl-Return before you used the mouse cursor in the emulator at least once, you may loose the cursor. One click on the desktop or pressing the control key suffices to bring back the cursor.

On PPC machines: Like previous builds, very CPU hungry. Do not set refresh rate in SheepShaver preferences higher than 30Hz.

On Intel machines: After minimizing or hiding the SheepShaver window and again bringing it back in view, colors in the window will not be displayed correctly. It can be resolved by forcing the emulator to redraw its screen by changing (and changing back) the color depth setting in Monitors control panel or from the color depth control strip tile.

In full-screen mode in 64-bit mode in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Serious cursor problems with clicking in the menu bar in full-screen mode. Use SheepShaver in 32-bit mode if you want to use it full-screen.